Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters #1)(55)

I smiled back at him, my own grim, scary smile. His answer was only what I had expected.

Christian rubbed his hands together, giving me a toothy grin. “Let’s do this.”

I smacked him in the back of the head. I swear it was barely a tap.

He sent me a disgruntled look.

“Don’t wish for it all to go to hell. That makes you crazy. And crazy gets you smacked.”

He gave a half-shrug. “I am what I am,” he said with a smirk.

I rolled my eyes at him.

“Right this way, Barbie and Ken,” Corbin said, heading resolutely towards the house.

“Okay, Buffy,” I murmured to his back. He’d started the name calling, after all.

He stifled a laugh. “Guess I asked for that,” he said, his voice pitched-low.

“That round went to Barbie,” Christian added, helpful as always.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Barbie And Buffy

We fell silent, wise-cracks and all, as we got close to the eerily silent house. It had a bad feel to it, which was understandable, but I thought I would have felt a chill up my spine even without a vampire hunter there to tell me what was inside.

Corbin opened the front door without a sound, easing it open agonizingly slowly. He disappeared inside, and I followed next. Christian brought up the rear, closing the door as quietly as it’d been opened.

There were street lights on outside, but they were dimmed, and we had been fighting in negligible light for most of the night. That didn’t bother me. My eyes had adjusted just fine. It took just a second for my eyes to adjust to the even darker interior of the house, but when I did, I froze, my eyes going wide in dismay as I looked up.

The ceiling was covered in the creatures, this one room alone holding more vampires than I’d ever seen in one place before. Their bat-like wings were wrapped around them, hiding their hairless, slimy bodies from view. It was a mercy, that. Vampires were hideous looking creatures, when they weren’t using glamour, and only the strong master’s even had that ability. How the monsters had turned into modern day sex symbols, I would never understand. The depictions of hideous nosferatu were much closer to the real thing than brooding teenagers with over-styled hair.

Corbin moved forward silently, and I followed closely behind, Christian a steady presence at my back.

The house was bigger than I would have guessed, and we made slow progress, through room after room, most of them empty, thank the gods. Corbin finally stopped at the bottom of a set of narrow stairs. He addressed Christian. “Fall back to the first room. Jillian and I will head upstairs.”

Christian nodded, disappearing without a word. Corbin didn’t have to mention that the master had to be upstairs. We had combed every inch of the first floor, so it was a given.

I followed Corbin very carefully up the stairs, trying hard not to make the old steps creak. We had just reached the top when Corbin froze, his entire body going stiff. I moved around him to see his face, rather than making a noise. I wasn’t reassured by what I saw.

His eyes glowed red, his face suddenly all harsh bones and angles. His mouth hung open, sharp fangs now protruding, dripping saliva. He took off his glasses and sniffed the air. He looked vaguely like a human version of a bloodhound on a scent. This was bad. He hadn’t gone all scary on me just for the hell of it. This was a vampire hunter’s reaction to being near a vampire. A vampire that wasn’t sleeping.

A deep voice called out from somewhere down the long hallway. “Helsing. I feel you. You cannot hide from me.”

“Fuck,” Corbin said around all of those sharp teeth, and broke into a blindingly fast sprint, heading for that voice.

I followed, pulling my axe from it’s shoulder holster as I moved.

All hint of the harmless scholar was gone as Corbin rushed into a room down the hall, so fast I couldn’t keep up. That was what I hated most about vampires. They were so freaking fast. I was fast, but they moved in a blur, even to me, finding a place to sink their fangs before you knew what hit you. And if they were real hungry, the place they found was usually your throat, right before they ripped it out. I’d be real salty if I got my throat ripped out tonight.

Corbin was moving vampire fast as he charged at the master, who met him in a loud clash, halfway into the room. I had barely rounded the doorway when they collided, snarling, into a furious brawl.

“The room down the hall,” Corbin barked at me. “Hurry, we don’t want any newborns escaping.”

I tore out of there, searching each room I passed, his description of my destination leaving something to be desired. In his defense, he had been a little preoccupied at the time.

I had passed three empty rooms before I found a nest of new vamps rising from the ground, blinking away their deep sleep. The master had arisen, and his whole nasty flock had just joined him. I cursed. The last few stragglers dropped from the ceiling, climbing slowly to their feet, confused and disgruntled at being disturbed. There were fourteen of them in the spacious room, and they were obviously disoriented from sleep. I struck.

I swung my axe in a large circle, using it’s weight as momentum to increase my speed. They scattered dizzyingly fast. Newborns were much weaker than the older ones, but unfortunately, they were just as fast. I only caught one on my first attack, clipping the hairless thing in the chin, then pushing forward to cut it’s head in half. Regrettably, it was the wrong half to cut, and I had to move into another broad swing to sever it’s head from it’s neck. All of this gave at least some of the vampires enough time to swarm me, pushing me onto my back.